[olowe]

> I’ve spent a decade doing frontend work.

Think about it this way: you've spent a decade writing software.

> Does it make sense to change direction at this point?

Changing direction isn't a binary thing. You can aim, say, 4.5 degrees to the left to change your trajectory ever so slightly. This is possible because whether you're working on CRUD forms or self-driving car data analytics pipelines many principles of software engineering are the same. For example good software is usually simple, clear, and portable [1].

Specialise in an industry vertical that is not just web development. Let's use healthcare as an example. If you're doing dropdowns and modals in healthcare software - try and understand if those widgets could be easily used in other healthcare software. Why or why not? Could that same dropdown be implemented in a native app using GTK and/or WinUI? Perhaps given the type of data you're working with a dropdown isn't the best way that it could be represented. Try loading up some disease definitions into Typesense[2] and presenting a more free-form text search for particular diseases. From there you can think beyond UI widgets and think more about general problem solving.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Practice_of_Programming [2]: https://typesense.org

[pepperball]

> Specialise in an industry vertical that is not just web development.

I have rarely seen a “non web dev vertical” job that’s required less than 5-10 years direct professional domain expertise.